Welcome!

This is my place to share my creative bits and pieces. My art has no rules, no limits and absolutely no order. My projects change with my moods but for the last few years, my main focus has been paper art. Cards, collage, mixed media and as many techniques as I can get to. My inspiration comes from everywhere.

I hope you enjoy your visit.

Monday, December 31, 2012

The Quietfire Design sentiment works because I have been looking back over the year and thinking of you. Thinking of your lovely comments or the fact that you come to look at all. I am grateful for your visits to my blog. I hope 2013 will be a year filled with all good stuff for you and yours.

The background for this card was made by smudging the Pear Pizzazz and Bermuda Bay ink pads on my craft sheet. I spritzed the inks with shimmer spray before I pressed the glossy card stock onto it. You can see the shimmer! I dried the card stock and saw how the inks had blended to form a different colour so I repeated the process, one ink colour at a time. Then I stamped my hand carved stamp using the Pear Pizzazz. Once dry, I stamped the sentiment using Basic gray, then used my Stamp-a-ma-jig to stamp next to it with Bermuda Bay.

The rest is embossing and die-cuts, and a few dots of shimmer white frost ink.

Saturday, December 15, 2012

For many years, we purchased tags to put on our gifts and had to write very small to fit on the to/from information. When I really got going with the card making, I added tag making as well. Here are the ones we're using this year. They have lots of room for writing on!

All these tags took a little time to make but a lot of the colouring was done while watching tv. I wish I could say it was a Christmas movie but I seem to recall X-men or something. Yes, really.

This last photo shows my favourites. They have lots of room, were very quick to make and have a contemporary look of banners.

Thursday, December 13, 2012

When I changed a card awhile ago, I was left with the strip of mittens I'd trimmed off. After stamping a few festive words in equally festive colours, I glued the mittens to the edge of the card stock. Then I embossed it and attached it to a card base. Looks a little windy!

Thursday, December 6, 2012

Once again, I am pleased with simplicity. This card began with a scrap on my work table.

The top layer, before I stamped it with the sentiment, was a piece I'd put aside after flipping my stencil onto it. Whenever I stencil, after using it on my project I like to lightly mist it and flip it onto cardstock to print the negative. The print here is subtle because the colours used were so pale. The piece was stamped then trimmed and the corners were punched.

This was layered onto the dark die-cut square, which was then adhered to the card base.

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Is it any surprise that the technique used here is called "ribbon tabbed borders"?

So simple to create, and so striking. I repeated the ribbons down the side but I also could have used all different ribbons, as long as the colours matched the card. I could have added some white too. The only rule I imagine would be to match the colours in the card.

I really like the look of the looped/folded ribbon but have seen it done with cut flat pieces and that looks good too. Now, we have another way to use up those ribbon scraps. yay!

Here's a closer look at the stamped holly. I used the rock 'n roll technique to ink up the stamp -apply lighter colour to stamp, then tilt it so only the edges pick up darker ink. The veins were painted on with a fine brush and the darker ink.

The stamps, Distress inks and embossing folder can all be found at Quietfire Design.

Sunday, December 2, 2012

One of my favourite things about the new Snowflakes are the Buttterflies stamp set from Quietfire Design is the snowflake Merry and Christmas stamps. They go together perfectly to create a very delicate and pretty snowflake.

This card has a circle stamped background. So easy peasy and you make it exactly as it sounds. My circle stamp is a die-cut fun foam stamp and it works great with Distress Inks.

You can see the light spritz of shimmer spray in this close-up.

Here is a card I previously posted using the same circle background technique, done the same way with the same fun foam stamp.